Clint Eastwood - The Days Before Hollywood

Years back, someone once asked Clint Eastwood:
"Did you once describe yourself as a bum and a drifter!"
"No," Clint replied.
"What are you, then?" The reporter asked.
Clint's reply, "A bum and a drifter."

This is the image of himself that Clint has loved to portray to the press and his fans for decades. Indeed, he was a child of the Depression, forced to move about constantly as his father looked for work throughout Northern and Southern California, as well as Texas, and Seattle. His Dad had been a bonds salesman, but with the onslaught of "The Great Depression" that was a position which became relatively extinct. Clinton Sr. was a proud man, but he never let pride stand in his way when it came to supporting his family. Clinton Sr. and his endearing childhood sweetheart, Margaret "Ruth" Runner, had been raised in Piedmont, a suburb completely surrounded by the city of Oakland (just across the bay from San Francisco). Dad was working as a cashier and just short of his 21st birthday when he married Ruth, who, at age 18, worked as an accountant for an insurance company. They were married in Piedmont, Calif. on June 5, 1927 at the Interdenominational Church (vows presided over by Rev. Charles D. Milliken).

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, on May 31, 1930. True to form, Clint impressed the girls with his entrance on the "Stage of Life". He popped out at an astounding 11 pounds, 6 ounces, the largest baby that the maternity nurses had ever seen. By now, Clinton Sr. had moved up from his cashier position, learning the ins and outs of the Stock Market Trade in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the Stock Market crashed in October, 1929 and his family's way of life would dramatically change for decades to come. All jobs became scarce in the thirties and Clinton found himself moving his family (Jeanne was born Jan. 18, 1934) up and down the Pacific Coast in search of steady work. He wasn't above any position, manual labor, or his most common job, gas station attendant. They once moved from the Oakland area when he found a job pumping gas in Pacific Palisades (an oceanside community, south of Malibu, in LA County). He worked for his brother, Burr Jr., for a while, and was able to buy a house in Piedmont from a relative at a great price. Clint was 10 at that time but the stability was to be short-lived. Clint Jr. began high school in Piedmont but soon transferred to Oakland Technical. When his parents had to move to the state of Washington, just prior to his senior year, Clint chose to stay behind. Now playing piano for tips at the Omar Club, a black jazz joint in downtown Oakland, he was able to earn pocket money while living in a friend's house until graduation.

As Clint tells it:
""I can't remember us being poor or suffering as children. Maybe my father did have his worries but neither Jean nor I ever knew about them. When I look back, I know Dad had to think pretty fast at times because there were a lot of people out of work in America around the time I was born. He often moved from one stocks and bonds company to another to try and better himself. That's why although I was born in San Francisco, my earliest memories are of living in Oakland. But it seems to me now we didn't live much in houses at all - we lived in cars. I can remember only a few of the places like Oakland and San Francisco and Sacramento - twice - and Seattle."
Douglas Thompson - CLINT EASTWOOD RIDING HIGH (1992)

Although the picture he draws sounds bleak, in reality, young children don't feel the anxiety and financial pressures unless their parents share them, and worse, dwell on them, or squabble in front of the children. The family never went hungry and Clinton and Ruth saw to it that their children received an education and got to experience the wonders of nature while growing up.

Again, Clint recalls the early days of his youth:
"My father was a big man physically and had competed in both football and track. He was fond of the outdoors and he took me hunting and fishing. He also taught me to swim well. When we lived in Redding and Sacramento, the Sierra Nevada Mountains were nearby and Jean and I were pretty good at skiing while we were still kids."
Ibid.

His beloved mother, Ruth, also was usually employed as well, so Clint and his sister, Jeanne, spent several summers at their single maternal grandmother's chicken ranch in the mountains of Northern California. Despite the family's itinerancy, he grew up in a loving, supportive environment, and subsequently, developed his hard-working, independent spirit from both his parents, and especially from his single grandmother. The only negative results of the family's early lifestyle was in Clint's social and academic development. He usually found himself attempting to catch up with his classmates as he moved from school to school. It also prevented him from establishing lasting childhood friends, thus making him the freakishly tall new kid in school, - "THE LONER". As a result of these recurrent situations in school, he developed a very creative, active imagination, something which would prove quite useful in his future career in the entertainment business. Another trait which matured in those years was his masculinity. The "New Kid" - the big, silent guy, was usually at least a foot taller than his classmates, and though silent and shy, was already attracting the attention of most of the young females in his classes. This situation taught him fighting skills, another professional attribute. Clint remembers when his priorities began to change:

"I became hooked on girls at an early age... I was at Glenview [at age fourteen in Oakland, California] Grammar School. Her name was Joan and she was a redhead, a little teeny bopper. What attracted me, I think, was that she was the most popular girl in class. It was actually very much a one-way situation. She never showed any signs of being intrigued with me. But for a time I stopped staring out of the window and began dreaming up to the front where she was sitting."
Ibid.

After discovering girls, the next major change for Clint came before he turned fifteen. His father bought him an old rattle-trap car for $25. The car took his mind off of the girls (for a very short time). The car became his first priority while girls took a back seat (soon to be literally). He turned 15 on May 30, 1945 and that summer, left home for the first time. He was about 6ft. 3in. at that age and the police never bothered him. He headed south and found a job baling hay in the California ranch country. He remembers barely being able to crawl into his bunk after a day's work. but by summer's end he had really buffed up his fifteen year old body. He was finally able to bond with some buddies and the hard working young ranch hands were known to "raise some hell". Clint remembers that summer as the happiest time of his young life. Though he had worked since he was 13, delivering newspapers and groceries, his new car now provided him with more lucrative financial opportunities, as well as new social avenues.

After graduating from Oakland Public and Oakland Technical School in summer 1948, he headed up to Grandma's chicken ranch in the Hayward County mountains, not far outside of Oakland. He soon realized that chicken farming was not going to be his career and hit the road to find himself and his future. He got a job working midnight to 7AM at the Bethlehem Steelworks just outside of Oakland. He decided dodging red hot flying sparks from the huge Bethlehem furnaces was not the answer to his occupational dreams either. However, one of his dreams was to be a lumberjack, so he followed his fascination with the macho logging business and headed north. When he hit Eugene, Oregon he found a job at the Weyerhauser pulp mill in Springfield, on the famed Willamette River. He barely escaped death when a load of giant logs fell from a crane and jammed against the crane missing the teenager by inches. He was assigned to a job inside the mill which paid a higher wage. Despite the pay increase, Clint preferred working outdoors and soon returned to his job felling trees, enjoying the rugged mountains, and tall pine and fir forests. On weekends, the mature teenager joined his fellow loggers and descended on the town of Eugene and, as Clint puts it: "more or less turned the place inside out". The lively bunch of loggers earned a reputation in Eugene and soon took their rowdy action to a little Country Western joint just out of town. Though earning good money for his labors, the young drifter knew this was not to be a career job.

When the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, Clint had just turned twenty years of age. He knew the draft was inevitable so together with a group of his fellow, footloose loggers, decided to take their healthy paychecks and newly refined party skills to the next level and headed south to San Francisco. Clint is proud of the time the gang had prior to their Army induction.
"We enjoyed ourselves so much that by the time we reported for our physicals we were so exhausted and partied out that we thought we might fail our examinations. But, we all made it".

He joined the Army, serving most of his stint at Fort Ord, in the San Francisco area. An excellent swimmer, he served a good portion of his army career as a lifeguard, a job that he held outside of the service as well. He moonlighted as a bouncer for the Officer's Club and a local bar, but had to quit when he began to fall asleep in his lifeguard chair.

Clint and Martin Milner in "Francis In The Navy" (1955)